On 12/12/2012 5:29 PM, Tim wrote:
> Anyone here have any experience with prepaid / "burner" phones?
> thanks
Off topic, but I'm curious too! (pls copy me or list, unless anyone is
really opposed to the addl traffic.)
I have a Virgin Mobile "Pay Lo" phone. They offer everything from a $15
or $20 flip phone, which I have, up to smart phones. Payment plans are
on different scales: you can get cheap minutes (0.05 - 0.10) but there
is a minimum you have to spend every month, or minutes may not carry
over. On the other end of the scale (what I'm doing) you pay a big ol'
0.20/min, but you only have to put a lousy $20 every 3 months on the
thing, then the accumulated minutes roll over forever. Their web site is
easy to use and has all the details, and their support people have been
decent to deal with.
I only keep it around for emergency use, so a dirt cheap phone and $80 a
year in service works for me. It blows me away how many folks are
spending $1,000-ish annually for fancy phones.
Virgin Mobile is on Sprint's network, and the coverage is not the
greatest. Got it through Best Buy, who also demanded an ID and some
personal info -- possibly a turn off if you're looking for anonymity,
but there are work arounds there I suppose.
More people around here (western North Carolina) have Verizon -- great
coverage, even in the mountains and some of the fastest 4G in the
country (40+ Mbs). Their pre-paid plans are pretty dang expensive also,
AND they have something like a "$1 per day, each day you make or receive
a call."
One of the BIG KICK ASS deals (IMO) that I've been trying to turn
friends onto is Verizon's "Home Phone Connect". As an alternative to a
land-line, they offer cell service in a box you can use with your
traditional home phones. You get a black box looks a lot like a wi-fi
router, has a cell radio in it, 2 RJ11 jacks on the back for phones, and
electronics to drive them. And a rechargeable battery to keep it alive
in power outages. I have a 3 handset cordless Panasonic set plugged in.
Then the other line plugs into the wall jack and back-feeds ring tone to
the other jacks in the house for a few hard-wired phones. Just
disconnect from papa-bell and splice all your house wiring together. I
am told the sound quality is better than the AT&T land-line I used to
have. Apparently the shitty sound quality on cells is due to the phone
and not the network (I HATE cell phone sound quality.) Caveat! -- there
is some major digital compression going on, optimized for human voice.
Music on hold sounds garbled, and you can not run a modem or fax over
it, and some home alarm services may not work.
Kicker -- it's only $20 a month, plus tax and fees (mine totals like
$23.86) for unlimited local and long distance calling. Or if you have
Verizon mobiles, you can share minutes with them (including unlimited
time plans) and get it for only $10 a month!!!!!
-Wayne ( !#@!$ AT&T !!!!!!!)
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